


Empty Reassurances and You: How to Stay Calm When the Mission Doesn't

by A_Galeb_Duhr_named_Squish



Series: Between Gunfire [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Galeb_Duhr_named_Squish/pseuds/A_Galeb_Duhr_named_Squish
Summary: Four Vault Hunters, freshly acquainted with one another, forge onward after a singularly unsettling event transpires.
Series: Between Gunfire [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519385
Kudos: 26





	Empty Reassurances and You: How to Stay Calm When the Mission Doesn't

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 of Between Gunfire; this will contain spoilers for the story arcs involving leaving Pandora, landing on Promethea, and smaller spoiler-ish mentions of the side quest 'Kill Killavolt'.

Now, Moze didn’t quite understand the logistics of Sirenhood. Even Amara, one of her companions, seemed to somewhat defy previously established rules for whatever freaky space-magic she was gifted with. It all seemed complex; you could be born a siren, or be made one. Amara had extra arms. Lilith, Moze’ new acting commander, could teleport in a way. It seemed like there was lots of variation, laws being broken and then mended, and it confused her.

One thing that no longer confused her, however, was the fact that Lilith was no longer a siren.

The Calypso twins, Troy and Tyreen, had led an ambush against the scrambled few of the Crimson Raiders, just as they made preparations to leave for Promethea. Moze, along with Zane, Amara, and Fl4k, had tried their best to repel the surprise assault, but it was far too late. By the time they reached the commander, her markings had vanished, and the Calypsos had obfuscated with the vault map, too.

Blood and bullets, the vault map. That troubled Moze the most, she thought. She and the rest of the group, led by Amara, had spent near on a day searching for it. To have it snatched away just as they were getting ready to leave with it was disheartening.

All the same, they had at least one destination. And, despite the Calypso’s best efforts, a working starship. Sanctuary III, everyone had taken to calling it. From talking to Tannis, Moze learned that the first iteration of Sanctuary was a mining ship somewhere on the continent’s east coast – at least, until an old Dahl offshoot besieged it and turned it into a garden. She neglected to mention the second one, despite Moze having asked multiple times, but that was whatever. Having access to the third was enough.

And what a beautiful ship it was. From the outside. The innards were messy, as if the veins of the ship were strung tight against the bones, with pipes, valves, and other intricate workings jutting out across walkways. Moze was thankful that the four designated rooms so graciously given to herself and the other three hunters were in no such state. In fact, she had spent nearly an hour furnishing the place while the ship’s chief engineer, Ellie, set to work on preparing for an FTL jump.

Moserah hadn’t had a home for much of her life, having been frequently either on the field of battle, or in a bunkhouse shared with other soldiers of all walks of life. Being able to have a place, however small it was, to call hers was… nice. Already, she had strewn tools about, setting to work on some upgrades to Iron Bear, using whatever little spare resources there were lying around. Presently, she was hunched over a workbench in the corner, covered in scrap metals and small mechanised devices. One such device had her attention, as she attempted to file down the tooth of a gear to make it fit in with a collection of others. This, at least, she understood.

Through the harsh grinding of the iron file on the cog, Moze’ ears detected a sharp rapping from her door, closed so as to work in peace. With a begrudging growl, she set both objects down, yanking a tar-covered rag from a corner of the bench and doing whatever little she could do to scrub the remaining blackened grease from her hands, all the while strolling towards the door. On reaching it, she planted the underside of her fist into a button on the side, and slung the rag over her shoulder as the door slipped upwards, revealing the uncharacteristically anguished face of Amara.

“Moze,” She started. “Do you have a second?”

Moze looked over her shoulder, back towards her work.

_Explosive payload can wait, I guess._

“Sure. Come on in.” She said, turning from the door.

To her surprise, Amara burst into the room, quickly overtaking Moze’ own steadily-paced stride. The siren hauled herself up onto the table in the centre of the room, sitting with her legs crossed, the toe of one boot hooked on the other’s ankle. “So, um. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

Moze raised a brow, and took a place leaning against her workbench, across the room from Amara. “Uh-huh.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I’m terrified.”

Well, that was _very_ strange to hear coming from Amara. She’d sort of become the de facto leader of the bunch, showing the aptitude for on-the-fly tactics and coordination. That, and the whole siren thing made her just a little more capable than anyone else.

She continued. “I mean, you saw what that Tyreen lunatic did to the Firehawk, right?” She gestured to the door with a finger, as if Lilith were right there, proving her point. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Now, I can throw a punch, but without my powers?”

Moze tilted her head back in realisation. “I getcha. She can only do that if she’s touching you, right?”

“I don’t know, probably. But, Moze, she can teleport now. I’m fast, but not that fast. If she grabs me… well, I guess I’m less worried about losing my powers, and more concerned with what she could do _with_ mine.” She held her hand out, flexing her fingers. “I trained for years, testing and exceeding the limits of what I could do. If Tyreen grabs me…”

“Years of development in seconds.” Moze sighed. “Yeah. Okay, I see how that could be scary.”

“So, like… what the hell do I do?”

_Good question._ She thought.

The answer? Well, Moze hadn’t the foggiest idea. “Amara, I’m gonna be frank. I dunno. I’m probably not the best person to talk to about this.”

“But… well, like, what would you do if you lost your mech?”

“Shoot the person who took it, probably.”

Amara rolled her eyes, scowling. “Moze.”

“It’s not really comparable to being a space wizard.” Moze levelled.

“Who else can I talk to about this? The only other siren on the ship is no longer a siren.” Amara put her palms together and gesticulated forcefully to emphasise her words. Her expression quickly went blank soon after. “I just realised that makes me the next logical target. Moze, I’m next!”

The mechanic pushed away from the workbench, taking a few steps towards the near-panicking siren. “No, no, you’re not. Alright? That bitch isn’t going to touch you.”

“How are we going to stop her?”

“Crimson Raiders to the bridge.” Lilith’s voice echoed over the intercom. It was welcomed, in a way, because Moze had absolutely no answer to Amara’s question, once more.

“We’ll… figure it out.” She said, scratching at the back of her neck. “Sounds like it’s time to jump to Promethea. Come on.”

Promethea was a far cry from what Moze pictured. To be sure, there were buildings reaching up to pierce the clouds, brilliant lights of every colour framing the skyline, and miles and miles of concrete and glass, as befitting of a megalopolis. However, that wasn’t the first exposure the Vault Hunters had. No, first contact came in the form of a sickeningly fast descent, from the hold of Sanctuary 3 all the way to the surface of the planet, via a drop pod. Regrettably, the pod didn’t have any kind of stabilizers or landing thrusters. Moze knew this, because halfway through the flight, her sense of gravity began to shift in a largely uncomfortable way.

The discomfort didn’t last long, thankfully. This was, unfortunately, due to the sudden impact against the surface of Promethea.

After regaining both consciousness and her bearings, she and the other three all but crawled out from the wreck of the drop pod. True to how the mission had progressed thus far, the rest of their task went poorly. The Calypso Twins’ ramshackle army turned up, delivered to the fray by Tyreen’s newly acquired powers. With the combined abilities of the four Vault Hunters, they weren’t a terrific amount of trouble, however, though Amara understandably kept her distance when possible. The cultists weren’t the only problem, though. The Maliwan Corporation had seemingly taken an interest in Promethea, and Atlas by extension, sending in warships to besiege the newly rebuilt company. The troops that the four faced were armed with advanced tech, and more than once did their elemental weapons threaten to bore through Iron Bear’s hide.

It wasn’t much later that they met Lorelei and Rhys, the former being the latter’s most dependable solider, and the latter being the new CEO of Atlas, having dug the corporation out from the grave. Once Lorelei aided them in reaching Watershed, a sort of forward operating base, they took a breather, recuperating from both the wild drop pod ride, and the onslaught of COV cultists. Additionally, Fl4k claimed it was time to give their skag something to drink, which, you know, was kinda cute.

Moze spent the majority of the rest perched on a pile of Atlas munition boxes, pondering. The situation wasn’t ideal. She’d gone from serving under the thumb of one corporation to rushing back into a warzone to aid another.

“That Lorelei, eh?” Zane’s voice pulled her from a silent lament. “Sailor’s mouth.”

“Corp work does that to ya.” Moze responded.

Zane laughed dryly. “Don’t I know it.” He said, casually strolling to sit beside her. “You trust me yet?”

The question caught Moze off her guard. “Kinda. Didn’t know you thought otherwise.”

“You think I don’t know when someone’s grabbing their piece just out ‘a view? I’m not on a job, lass.” He shot her a warm smile, which still managed to make Moze a little uncomfortable. “You’ve nothing to worry about.”

Moze figured that would be nice, if it were true. Time would tell. “Zane, what’s the truth of why you’re here? Retiring sure isn’t it.”

“No, that’s the honest truth. Scoundrel’s honor.” He defied. “But that raises a good point, you haven’t been honest with us either.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, you got awful touchy when Fl4k mentioned I’d worked with Vladof. You expecting to hear from them? Didn’t end on good terms?”

She really should have expected this. Zane had proven to be smarter than Moze initially gave him credit for, it was bound to be that he’d pick up on a lie. Her biggest one, too. Figures. She’d managed to keep it hidden from Fl4k and Amara all this time, being that Amara never bothered to ask, and Fl4k wasn’t much for conversation anyway. But Zane? Decades of experience in dozens of fields? There was no hiding anything from that.

“No. Not really.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Moze grumbled, shifting in her seat. “Fine. I guess if we’re going to be… depending on each other, we’d better be on the same page.” She folded her arms as she recalled the story, trying to pinpoint a good place to start. “I was under a contract. A pretty binding one. I wanted to nab myself an Iron Bear mech, but the only way to do that was to serve out the required number of missions on the contract.”

“Naturally.”

“That number kept changing, until I was sent on one last mission.” She grimaced. “Long story short, only I got out of there. I didn’t wait for an extraction; just left with Iron Bear. I’m assuming Vladof never found my corpse, so… I figure they’ll take it as a violation of my contract, and theft of company assets on top of that.”

Zane nodded. “So you’re watching your back?”

“I am. And honestly? My neck’s startin’ to ache.”

That elicited a giggle. “I’ll watch it for you, lass. We’re in this together, now.”

Together, as it happened, consisted of just Zane and Moze for a while, as the four found themselves splitting up for tasks in opposite ends of the Meridian. Fl4k and Amara took the task of finding a medic who required additional medical supplies for civilians wounded and maimed by Maliwan’s wanton assault, whilst the former two were in the employ of Sanctuary’s own Miss Moxxi.

The mission seemed simple; head to Lectra City, in the northern parts of the Metroplex, find a prolific COV bandit named Killavolt, and ice him. They figured it would be a useful way to clean up some COV from Atlas grounds, and nab some payment to put towards future upgrades to both Iron Bear and Zane’s assorted gadgets. At the moment, though, Zane had taken it upon himself to climb one of the clusters of buildings, sniper rifle in hand, and take shots at any fanatic unlucky enough to cross his line of sight. Moze obliged in following him, leaning cross-armed on the railing which the hitman used to steady his aim.

“What’s the use in being up here again?”

“I’m plotting a course. And, racking up my kill count higher than yours.”

“It’s not a competition.”

“Those are the words of someone currently losing the competition, lass.” Zane snickered. “Ooh! Look at that one! Down there, with the two buzzaxes. Where’d he even get the second one?”

Moze followed his line of sight down, squinting to see that far into the distance. Sure enough, there was a masked psycho relishing over the fact that he’d procured a second weapon. He seemed happy about it. There was a bang, and then the psycho didn’t seem much of anything other than dead.

The barrel of Zane’s rifle smoked as he laughed. “Ha… eejits.”

“You make it look easy.” Moze didn’t even realise she was muttering until the sentence was done. When Zane hummed in question, she continued. “You know, all of this. Feels like an endless horde. No end to them.”

Zane smiled. “Aye, and there probably isn’t. Not until we take it to those right prick Calypsos. For now, though…” Another gunshot as some nameless COV gunman fell back into his own fluids. “We’ll annoy them any way we can.”

“You talk like you’ve done this before.”

The older man gazed towards Moze, an incredulous look on his brow.

Moze rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. “Right. ‘Course you have.”

“Assassinations don’t often end up being cut-and-dried, lass. Hardly ever would I be able to just waltz up and put a round between some hapless git’s eyes.” He returned to looking through the scope of the rifle. “It takes planning, finesse. And no small amount of interference. You put them off balance first; whittle down their forces, create opportunities to get closer. That’s when you go for it.”

The mechanic hummed. “How do we whittle down the endless?”

“We don’t. We create opportunities to get closer.”

“How?”

A faint chuckle from the hitman. “We make ‘em angry.”


End file.
